After making the decision to change, the next step in the Sliding Scales of Change process is to decide the speed at which to implement the change. For some changes, “fast, like a Band-Aid!” is the most appropriate. At other times, slow and steady will indeed win the race. Here are some criteria for choosing a pace for your change.

Is it a Crisis?
In a time of true crisis, such as a natural disaster, hostile takeover attempt, or serious health problem, rapid change may be the only viable option. The caveat here is that many situations can be perceived as a crisis when they are actually long-term issues that may have just boiled to the surface. In American society, especially, we tend to declare issues a “crisis” to try to catalyze rapid change. When this technique is used too often, people can develop change fatigue and become resistant to all types of change.

Magnitude of Change
Generally, the more complex a change is, the more time it will take to implement effectively. This is quite obvious on an organizational level. Complex software implementations or company wide reorganizations can take years to implement. A smaller change, such as cross-training within departments might be feasible on a very rapid schedule.

How Much Previous Change
For people or organizations that have had to incorporate many changes in the recent past, change fatigue might have set in. If that is the case, a slower pace may be necessary. In a department that has been reorganized to report to a different division head, then been cross-trained on new jobs, then had to adapt to a new ERM system all within a year or two, even a small change might be too much to integrate quickly. Time, training, and mental preparation all become more necessary as complexity and overload increase.

Resistance to Change
The more resistant a person or organization is to change, the longer it will take to change successfully. Some organizations have a culture of change and can switch tactics and strategies very quickly with very little pain. On the surface, it seems like age and openness to change are negatively correlated. In general, the older we get as individuals or as work teams, the less adaptable we are. This means that any change process will take longer, cause more pain, and have less chance for a successful outcome. Adjusting the pace to make the process as easy as possible will increase the chances for success.

What Feels Right
Regardless of all of the other considerations involved, sometimes a certain pace of change just feels right. As an example, I have an uncle who smoked for at least 20 years. He decided one day that he wanted to quit smoking – and he did right then. He claims to this day that he has only had one physical craving for a cigarette since then, when he was training a new semi-truck driver in a Chicago snowstorm!

A Personal Example
When I was in high school, I decided that I wanted to become a vegetarian. I wasn’t conceiving of this as a 30-day-trial or other temporary experiment. I wanted to stop eating meat immediately and never eat meat again. One day I just decided to quit eating meat.

That lasted about 3 days.

I realized that becoming a vegetarian was too large of a change for me to handle all at once. To be successful, I needed to educate myself about nutrition and food preparation issues; speak to my family about my decision; develop strategies for dining out in the American Midwest; and explain to my grandmother that I would not die immediately by skipping the pot roast at dinner.

After considering all of this, I decided to transition to vegetarianism in a very gradual way, by giving up one type of meat each year. Year 1 was pork, Year 2 was beef, Year 3 was chicken/turkey. Eventually I had eliminated and found substitutes for all the types of meat from my old diet. In my case, a setting of about 2 on the sliding scale was the most effective.

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